For the next forty-five minutes they tossed ideas back and forth until Jason called an end to the meeting.

You were very well informed about Topolino,’ he said when he followed Martha out of the room. ‘Been researching baby stuff, have you?’

‘I was buying a present for a friend’s newborn,’ she lied, her game face on. If this was Jason’s not-so-subtle way of asking her if she was pregnant, or planning to be, a question by law he was not allowed to ask, he was crossing a line. But men like Jason were adept at crossing lines and could somehow always get away with it. Clever, dynamic and strikingly good-looking, and with an uncanny knack for seemingly knowing what she was thinking, he might have been a temptation for Martha in another life. But not now. Now she could see through the smokescreen of his super-strength charm.

‘I hope you found something nice,’ he said with a slow smile, before sauntering off to his office.

I did, she thought, picturing the beautiful little jacket she’d bought, and which was hidden in the spare room at home. She’d bought it before the recent allegations had been made about Topolino and she very much hoped it had been produced as ethically as the company now claimed all their clothing lines were.

Lunch was a hurried cup of miso soup heated in the office microwave, and then it was another meeting with an existing client, an online betting website that needed to be seen as advocating responsible gambling while at the same time inviting their core audience – people who couldn’t afford to lose money – to gamble even more.

It was not the most creative or inspiring of days, she thought that evening when she was on the crowded train home. When you had a business to run, you couldn’t pick and choose your clients, Jason frequently said. Martha wasn’t so sure about that. In this day and age, shouldn’t they be more ethically minded, a bit more discerning? Jason had a thing about ‘keeping it real’ but at the same time he would play the game by whatever new rules he’d been handed.

Her father would have agreed one hundred per cent with Jason. Business was business. You did your best for the client, and for those who worked for you, and you didn’t judge. It was a dog-eat-dog world out there and not for the fainthearted.

Martha had idolised her father from an early age and had wanted to be just like him, full of drive and energy. He’d made everything fun, and possible. ‘There’s no such thing as can’t,’ he had drilled into her. ‘Everything in life is up for grabs. You just have to believe it’s yours for the taking.’

Martha had believed him and had done everything she could to be the success she knew he wanted her to be. He had been so proud of her when she’d graduated with a first-class honours degree in Business Studies, and prouder still when she’d subsequently completed her master’s in marketing.